Ken – politics certainly has changed since the 60s, and your story is a good example of that. There are doubtless many reasons for this, but the voting system is arguably not one of them – our MPs and constituency MSPs are still elected by FPP.

True, the regional MSPs give a more proportional result at Holyrood, which I have no argument with.

At local authority level I’m less convinced that the PR system has been an improvement. The wards are geographically too big for the councillors to get completely to grips with, especially in the rural areas. They can work together to divide up the wards into ‘patches’ which they nominally take responsibility for, but that responsibility is greatly diluted.

That’s not to say that there are not some advantages – as pointed out above by Anne & Dave McEwan Hill, but personally I still think the new system is not an improvement overall.

Tim McIntyre also commented

Dave McEwan Hill’s point that we used to have too many uncontested council seats is certainly valid.

Mind you, maybe more people are standing for election these days for other reasons….

The STV system should never have been introduced in sparsely populated rural/small town areas for council elections.

The confusion it causes voters (and indeed some councillors, it would seem) is bad enough – much worse, it has severely diluted the clear link which used to exist between each councillor and his or her constituents.

PR/STV might make some sense in city areas where it can help to break single-party domination, but not in predominantly rural councils where the wards are now geographically far too big.

Recent comments by Tim McIntyre

Holyrood: the disappeared“The SNP’s Mike Mackenzie… was clearly not going to get back to Holyrood in an election where the constituency vote would be dominated by the SNP.”

The constituency vote made no difference – Highland elected the same number of SNP constituency MSPs as in 2011, so the loss of two Highland list SNPs MSPs is solely down to a reduction in their regional vote, from 47.5% to 37.9%.

The Tories’ astute move to wrap themselves in the union flag and thus, in effect, revert to their original identity as the Conservative & Unionist party has certainly paid them an impressive dividend electorally.

It will be interesting to see whether the reverse is true – i.e. whether being hard-wired to the Tory brand will do Unionism itself any favours over the course of this parliament.

Anyway, taking up your point about political ‘blinkers’ – maybe so, but I hastily add that I’m not defending him against the legitimate anger of his constituents, who are really the only folk that have an interest in his future now that he is a lowly back bench opposition MP in one of the smaller parties, and not a minister of state.

Those constituents – including no doubt a good number who voted for him having believed his claim that he knew nothing about a grubby smear campaign – have every right to feel pretty unhappy at what has transpired, and especially that it was kept carefully concealed until after they cast their votes. That is not a party political point in itself, and it is unfair and simplistic to characterise the legal campaign to force a by-election as such.

Given the high cost (and no legal aid) of raising an action, and the even more eye-watering potential for the awarding of costs in the event of failure, crowd funding seems to me a fair & transparent way to raise the money needed. Doubtless the campaigners are benefitting quite a bit from politically-motivated donations, especially given that Carmichael was one of the more, er, bruising personalities in the ‘No Thanks’ campaign. However, at the end of the day it is the court that will decide, even if the politics helps raise the cash.

As I understand it, the case will turn on whether the court finds that Alistair Carmichael’s admitted lie – that he knew nothing of the memo until contacted by journalists – amounts to ‘corrupt and illegal’ practice under the Representation of the People Act.

In other words, did Mr Carmichael try to cover up his own involvement in the smear in order to present himself to his constituents as an honourable and decent candidate for re-election, and thereby affect the outcome in Orkney & Shetland.

I suspect that anyone hoping for a detailed investigation into the writing of the memo itself may be disappointed…

Forget tactical voting for unity. Forget the coming of the one-party state. Your party matters more?Integrity – I’m sure you are right that the convention is informal, and obviously the parties can talk to each other as they wish – as the Lib Dems did with Labour last time. However, I assume that in practice, David Cameron would try every option to form a government and would not resign until these had been exhausted (as Gordon Brown did last time, despite coming a distant second). Only then would the SNP’s offer to Labour come into play.

John M – the SNP cannot ‘vote down’ a Tory government which has managed to assemble majority support – the key phrase in your quote being “if there is an anti-Tory majority”

Newsroom, I think you are right that stability could be a problem, especially as the Tory press in the south will do everything possible to de-stabilise a SNP-supported minority Labour government. If they can portray it as illegitimate that Labour gets to govern while the Tories got a majority in England, they will do so, loudly and insistently, and regardless of the damage to the Union.